How to Become a Freelance Grant Writer and Make $35 an Hour

Freelancing is a great way to make money from home with your laptop or computer. While there are hundreds of types of freelancing jobs available for you to work from home, freelance grant writing can be pretty lucrative.

The average freelance grant writer’s salary is around $75,000, but this can vary significantly on experience, client budget, and other factors. Even beginners can start making around $35 an hour.

If you are interested in becoming a grant writer, I will walk you through the step-by-step process that you can use to start making money in your first month.

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How to Become a Freelance Grant Writer

You can become a freelance grant writer without any previous experience. However, if you are just starting off it may be best to work on a couple of projects first before you start working for paying clients.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to becoming a Freelancing and Successful Grant Writer

Build up a portfolio with some writing experience
Join platforms to find clients
Improve skills, and expand expertise or focus on a specific niche
Create your own website to build your brand
Network and build a list of clients

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What is a Grant Writer?

A grant writer is an individual who helps organizations, individuals, or companies get grant funding. The grant writer will need to do research, write a draft, and submit grant proposals to the funding sources.

A freelance writer will often write grant proposals for nonprofit organizations to help get grant money for specific purposes, like remodeling an old building, purchasing supplies for events or programs, and more.

Grant applications often take a decent chunk of time. This time varies from 20-30 hours sometimes, but occasionally may only require just a few hours.

However, in some cases, grant writing jobs can take weeks or even months if they are more complex.

This is partly why grant writing jobs are in such high demand. And, the projected job growth for grant writers is expected to grow by 6% through 2028, with a 7% salary increase.

If you want to learn even more about what a grant writer is you can check that at at BLS.gov, to decide if this is the right career path for you.

Want to see how much you can make each year as a grant writer? Punch in how many hours you plan to work and what you want to charge.

How do Grant Writers Get Paid?

You can’t spell freelance with fee, right?

It’s important that you get paid for your hard work. And since some grant proposals may take weeks or even months, the client or organization that you work for may choose to pay you on an hourly rate, or a set amount for a specific project.

If you do grant writing for professional organizations as their employee, you may also get paid a salary with benefits. In this case, you may have very little effect on your pay rate.

As a freelancer though, you have a bit more wiggle room and can set higher rates, especially if you don’t receive benefits through your work. With this freedom, you get to make a little extra money.

Even though it may seem normal, or acceptable to receive a bonus if you write a successful grant proposal, this is actually not the case.

You do not, and should not get any bonuses or rewards if your proposal is accepted. Unfortunately, this is seen as unethical and can lead to your organization potentially losing the funding they were awarded.

Keep this in mind as you choose how you set your pricing.

That being said, it is common to charge around 2-3% of the grant award amount, as this is a typical and fair compensation rate for the time it will likely take you to write a strong proposal.

Who do Grant Writers Help?

Grant writers most often help larger nonprofit organizations, smaller nonprofits, small businesses, homeless shelters, and even animal welfare.

These organizations often need a regular flow of grant funding and additional funding to keep their doors open to continue to serve their community.

Grant writers, using their creative writing skills, expertise, and communication skills, write proposals to government agencies, philanthropists, and other potential funders to help secure much-needed funds.

Federal grants are among the most common, but a grant writer may be asked to write to other funding sources. Who you are writing to will change the way you write, the language you use, and the research involved.

As a whole, grant writers often have a positive impact on the organizations they are helping. As such, these organizations may establish a team of grant writers to help secure a regular source of income and will have a budget for these services.

What the Typical Grant Writing Process Looks Like

The process my vary from person to person. However, the main process involves some research, a little bit of math calculations, some communication, and of course writing.

Research grant opportunities for your organization (if not already provided with this information)
Research and review effective past proposals for an organization, or funding source (what worked and what didn’t?)
Ensure the new grant proposal is within their mission and guidelines
Develop a detailed plan for the purpose of the funding (how will it be spent?)
Highlight past experiences, expertise, and qualifications of your organization
Provide a layout for how data will be collected/analyzed for the effectiveness of the funding
Start an outline of the proposal, and begin writing
Edit, proof-read, and revise as needed after feedback

It is important to check in regularly with your organization to make sure that your efforts, and the proposal is aligning properly. You don’t want to have to redo hours of work because you missed something.

As a freelancer, checking in once a day may be adequate. However, more often may be necessary, so check with your organization before you get started.

If you want to see an outline of what a great grant proposal looks like, check this one out at The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance.

who do grant writers help - group of volunteers helping refugees

Building Your Grant Writing Portfolio

If you are new to grant writing, you will want to start building up a portfolio. The easiest way to do this is to volunteer some of your time or offer a much lower rate than other freelancers.

There are many organizations that can greatly benefit from grant funding but can’t afford to budget for a paid grant writer. This is where you can step in and help a local nonprofit, or any organization in the nonprofit sector.

Not only are you doing a good service that looks great on your resume and portfolio, but you are easing your way into grant writing, without costing an arm and leg to a company that can’t afford it.

Ways to Get Grant Writing Experience

Finding organizations that are in greater need of funding, but have little, or no budget for a paid grant writer can be a good opportunity for you.

You can offer your services to these organizations for free. In exchange for helping a good cause, you gain both experience and exposure.

If you want to do more volunteer work as a new grant writer to build up your portfolio, you may want to help a variety of organizations to broaden your area of expertise. This puts you in a better position when looking for paid work.

The alternative to volunteer work is to offer your services at a lower rate in the beginning. Look around for some local organizations that may be hiring. Consider offering services at a lower rate than the standard to improve your hiring chances.

How to Improve Your Grant Writing Skills

Improving your writing skills is essential for any writing job. And, it also just happens over time. As a grant writer though, having strong writing skills can impact whether or not your organization gets the necessary funding they need.

So, to improve your skills, you will want to consider taking online courses that address grant writing, and other writing skills.

A great course that you can take to improve your writing skills and make your first $15,000 as a grant writer is the Global Grant Writer’s Collective.

Here’s a list of a few other grant writing courses, and certificates that you can work on:

Free Grant Writing Courses (NonProfitReady.org)
Instrumentl (free workshops)
Your local colleges and universities may offer classes

How to Write a Successful Grant Proposal

Tips for writing a successful proposal:

Use clear, concise language (no jargon, slang, etc.)
Utilize data, statistics, and numbers to provide strong evidence of need
Use compelling language that encourages someone to take action (define the purpose of the funding)
Ensure that tense, and verbiage are all correct and consistent (i.e. had, has, would have)
Proof-read and edit the proposal multiple times (revise as needed)

As someone with previous experience working in healthcare, I would have to document everything I did after treating a patient. At the end of the documentation, there is a section that I would fill out called the “Assessment” section.

This section is where I would fill out my thoughts on how the patient was improving, and what we still needed to work on. This is also where I would write the justification of why we did certain activities, and why they were necessary.

I often used language like “The patient will require continued skilled therapy to improve strengthening, balance, and safety needed for independence to return to their prior level of function”. This ‘justifies’ to insurance that the current treatment is helping, and that the patient will need continued treatment in order to benefit the most and “prevent and reduce risk of readmission to the hospital”.

When you write a grant proposal, think of it like you are writing to an insurance company. Or like you are writing for a college scholarship.

Why is this funding necessary?
How will this funding help?
Who will this funding help?
What kind of investment will this funding provide for the future?
Why does the organization need $X in funding?

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Finding Grant Writing Work

There are many places to look for grant writing work online. Finding potential employers isn’t always necessary, because, with many platforms, they find you.

Make sure to price yourself accordingly based on your past experience, and success rate. Be a little flexible on how you choose to set your prices in case some organizations provide pay by the project, hourly, or some other method.

There’s a list of a few places to offer freelance work in the next section.

Platforms to Find Freelance Work

Choosing the right platform to build up your freelance If you want to become a Fiverr affiliate, and get paid commissions for every time someone purchases through your link, you can join Fiverr’s affiliate program. You can also have sub-affiliates sign up under you to recommend other freelancers and get paid 10% of what they are earning for some extra cash.
free resources

While building your own brand, you will want to consider making a logo for your business. You can get a professional logo package for around $30 on Fiverr.

Building Your Own Freelance Website

If you enjoy design and like the idea of having your own website where you can share your best work, you may want to consider building a website.

Having your own website can be an excellent way to establish some brand authority and show off your professional skills. You can add your best work, and show off the great results you’ve gotten for past clients.

By doing this, you will have a much higher chance of getting new clients who are more interested in you and are likely willing to pay you more than your competitors.

On your own website, you will more easily be able to show off work, set your pricing, and you can use the testimonials of your previous clients.

An excellent addition that you can also add to your site is a results section. This can be part of where you show off. By adding a visual element to your site, you can show how much money you’ve helped companies and organizations get in funding.

What better selling point than to show off actual results, right?

Is it hard to build a website? I won’t lie and say that it’s easy.

As a blogger, it took me around 1-3 months to really get my WordPress site to look the way I wanted it to. And I later decided to change the theme because I wanted a fresher look. That time it only took about 2 weeks.

But, it also isn’t as difficult as you might think. Depending on what platform you want to build your site on, most of the hard work may already be done for you. Some common platforms like Wix allow you to create a site for free, and upgrade whenever you want.

With some platforms, you may be able to have a great-looking site up and running in less than an hour.

Networking for Freelance Grant Work

Once you have built up a bit of a portfolio of your previous work and experiences, you can start marketing yourself to new potential clients.

You can also ask your previous clients to refer and recommend you to other companies in need of some help with grant funding. Once you have completed work with a previous client, consider asking them to leave a review on your Facebook page, Instagram profile, social message chat, or website. Whatever platform you prefer.

You can use those reviews as social proof to share on social media or when marketing to new clients.

The great thing about networking for more work, is that you can help other freelancers and they can help you. If you’ve had more experience writing for grants for specific types of non-profit organizations, other freelancers may refer those projects to you.

You can do the same favors for other freelancers and pay it forward. This type of community development is perfect for building your brand up much quicker than doing everything on your own.

Final Thoughts on How to Become a Freelance Grant Writer

Becoming a freelance grant writer is a great side hustle for some extra cash. It is also a great alternative to working a typical 9-5 and can be a great choice for work-from-home parents.

Whether or not you have a degree or much writing experience, freelance grant writing can be a great full-time or side hustle job for you. However, if you want to be successful and charge more per hour, you will want to build up a portfolio to prove your value.